Saturday 21 November 2009

Welcome to my blog




Hello there!

This is my first attempt at this blog about cupcakes.

I have been crazy about cupcakes since March/April this year. Being Norwegian I had hardly heard about cupcakes, as our cupcakes are more akin to the British fairy cakes (a small round sponge cake with a simple icing made of icing sugar and a little bit of water). My passion and slight obsession is the American-style cupcakes. The moist sponge with a nice big dollop of cream cheese frosting or buttercream. Yes, that is what I am talking about!

I live in Greece, a country filled with baklava and syrup eating people. Cupcakes are a novelty here and very hard to come by. As a matter of fact, in the city I live in (Thessaloniki) you cannot buy one nice cupcake to eat if you feel like it. No, you have to go to one big bakery chain and order them for big events like birthday, baptism etc. And can you choose your own flavours? No! You can only have vanilla flavour with what I believe to be a not so nice icing...

The cupcakes they make did look nice in their window though, so I thought to myself. Why don't I make cupcakes myself for my daughter's baptism? And that's how my love for cupcakes started!

The very first cupcakes I tried to make were carrot cupcakes. Lovely, moist carrot cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting. I might try to dig up a picture later.

The cupcakes I made for the baptism were chocolate cupcakes with a pink buttercream topped with brown baby booties with a pink heart for decoration on each boot. I am not a great fan of the buttercream as I often find it too sweet, but as the baptism took place at the very day the Big Easter Week started in Greece any oil, real butter, eggs and milk had to be avoided. The chocolate cupcake had no eggs in them, but used some vegetable margarine and apple sauce to make them moist. The guests loved the cupcakes and I loved the positive feedback. I needed to make more!

This blog is therefore my story about my cupcake adventures. I promise to keep the coming posts shorter (if you managed to read this far, thank you!)